Reading the Classics

I am reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is story of Abraham Lincoln and how much of his success was in his ability to put enmity aside and work with his former rivals once he attained the presidency.

One of the elements that so impresses me is how well read those early leaders were in the classics, from the Greek and Romans all the way up to Shakespeare. Lincoln even taught himself Euclidean geometry.  

I thought about it, however, and realized several things enabled these men, and women to some extent, to be so learned.  

• Readers had limited choices. There were no John Grishams or Mary Higgins Clarks around, pounding out a novel every year or so. One was more likely to get a copy of the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. There were some best sellers. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe sold 300,000 copies in its first year. 
• People had longer attention spans. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were three hours long. The lead-off speaker was given an hour. The follow-up speaker was given an hour-and-a-half, and then the first speaker had thirty minutes for his rebuttal. These were true events. Thousands of people came to hang on every word. Today, between Fed-Ex, the internet and cell phones, we are raising a world of ADD people.  Candy Crowley and Jim Lehrer had a heck of a time keeping Obama and Romney to two minute answers.
• There was no television, no radio and no internet. This translates into a lot of spare time to do great stuff.

 And here I am, trying to read Team of Rivals between phone calls, the television and endless interruptions. Next it is the History of the Peloponnesian Wars.

See ya’ later.

WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Comments

[AndyMcKell]

Good article about shorter attention spans... but I lost the thread halfway through ;-)

[Skip]

Thucydides is a good read, but Herodotus is more fun.

I'm reading The Sand Pebbles right now. I've made a list of "classics" and am just working my way through them. I give them roughly the same treatment any novel gets from me: you'd better grab my attention and hold it because there's a hundred more waiting in line. There have definitely been some classics that didn't click with me. Others, and The Sand Pebbles is one, have been wonderful surprises.